Los Angeles billboard icon Anh Phoong tells her story and is styled by Humberto León

Anh Phoong is not afraid of heights. He has a vivid memory of herself in college dancing on top of a nightclub speaker. She is an image of herself that her friends do not allow her to live to this day, telling her: “Anh, the only thing we remember you about is the girl with the speakers.”

Now she is the billboard woman.

If his name doesn't immediately ring a bell, it will when it's said in one sentence: “Is something wrong? Call Anh Phoong.” I first saw the blue and yellow personal injury attorney signs last November. They impacted me in a way that no other lawyer billboard has. There was something cheesy I couldn't put my finger on, so I took a photo and posted it to my Instagram story. “This is a great service,” I wrote. Immediately, other friends responded, also curious about this Asian woman who was rivaling Jacoby & Meyers and Shen Yun.

Six months later I will meet Phoong for dinner. He's in Los Angeles to attend his goddaughter's college graduation and wants Asian food. Phoong is Vietnamese Chinese, which means I'm twice as likely to disappoint her with restaurant recommendations. And so, we meet at Lasita in Chinatown, a Filipino steakhouse that I know we'll both love.

Phoong tells me a story during dinner. Earlier that day, Phoong and his assistant, Linh Lee, had been walking in downtown Los Angeles, and just as they were about to cross the street, Lee saw her boss's ad on the back of a car. bus. When she tried to get Phoong's attention, she realized that it was not Anh Phoong on the bus, but Glen Powell. “Keep your hands clean. Call Dean,” the sign said. The actor wore a red sweater reminiscent of Phoong's outfit on the billboards of him standing in the middle of a blue and yellow billboard. In the bottom corner, Lee noticed the Netflix logo and then clicked: It was a parody poster promoting the streaming service's new movie “Hit Man.”.”

Anh Phoong wears Gao top and skirt.

“We weren't sure if it was a coincidence that [Netflix’s] The posters were exactly the same as Anh's, but after reading his slogan, we were sure it was a knockoff,” says Lee. Phoong adds: “I'm flattered by that. The best compliment is when people try to imitate you.”

His catchphrase has a specific cadence, one that easily evokes a laugh after each recitation. It's a simple rhyme that Phoong's husband came up with while on vacation in 2016. The couple tossed around a few ideas during their cruise until they came up with the now-famous catchphrase, which she initially thought was “so stupid it's not going to work.” . “

What he didn't know was that the slogan would later catapult his Sacramento company into the pop culture zeitgeist. When companies reduced advertising spending during the pandemic, Phoong noticed all the empty discount billboards in California. He took advantage of the packages and expanded his business to the Bay Area. Last November, the “Queen of NorCal,” as she is nicknamed, finally set her sights on the City of Angels.

“What started happening in Northern California was that a lot of lawyers from Los Angeles were coming here,” Phoong explains. “They would pretend to be me. “They are buying my name, buying Google ads.” One day, Phoong says, a man barged into his office claiming to be his client. She had no record of it, but he insisted that she was telling the truth. After reviewing her contract, Phoong discovered that the man called another company's number from a Google ad, posing as Phoong Law.

“Don't buy my name and tell people you're me. That is downright fraud,” she states. While most lawyers would file a lawsuit, Phoong responded by taking control of Los Angeles.

Almost immediately, their ads took the city by storm. “Just saw an Anh Phoong billboard in LA… she's EVOLVING,” someone wrote on x. “No person or company has had a better advertising marketing campaign than her, and it is necessary to study it in school,” said TikToker Ben Trinh in a video.

I didn't realize until I moved here from the Midwest that Angelenos look up to lawyers like they're celebrities. When famed personal injury attorney Larry H. Parker died in March, there was an outpouring of tributes on social media. The 75-year-old lawyer was an early adopter of litigation advertising on television and became known for his catchphrase: “We'll fight for you.”

Anh Phoong wears a top by Oori Ott and a skirt by Leeann Huang.

“Not everyone knows who the big movie or pop star is, but we all know who the local injury lawyer is,” Alfonso González Jr. tells me. The visual artist, who began his career as a billboard painter, closed recently installed at Jeffrey Deitch. “On the edge of the sun” exhibit. Gonzalez hand-painted real advertisements for local injury attorneys on more than 30 canvases, from Adriana's Insurance to James Wang.

“The way we navigate the vast landscape of streets and highways by car, combined with the influence of the film industry, creates the perfect environment for the billboard format,” he explains. “There is a long history of hand-painted billboards in Hollywood, primarily for movie posters, but also for local icons like Angelyne,” González adds.

In 1984, a series of billboards depicting a blonde woman in suggestive poses were placed throughout the city. The only text was her name, Angelyne, stamped in hot pink letters. No one knew who this mysterious blonde was, but posters of her attracted public attention, leading to offers from movie studios and magazines. Gonzalez, who apprenticed with the original Angelyne sign painters, thinks some of these lawyers are today's Angelynes. But he also criticizes the influx of personal injury billboards in his work by “humorously confronting marketing tactics like fear mongering and appealing to specific demographics.”

Phoong says his business is not to spread fear. “I don't want to intimidate people because many times you can't be honest with your lawyer,” he tells me over plates of pork belly suckling pig and Napa Caesar salad. “Anyone can get into a car accident… but you don't know who you can turn to except white people.” He knows he doesn't fit in and adds: “What you would normally see was an older white man; dominant, powerful and serious. “We wanted to be different.”

The first decision he made was not to wear a suit on his billboards. “I just want to be real; I want people to see me,” she says. In his first poster, he intended to wear a black dress because he felt “confident.” Phoong wanted to incorporate more of his personal style and he told me that his favorite designers include Gucci, Hermès, Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana. Over time, he added more colors to his billboard ensembles and later donned a burgundy and blue dress that even inspired a drag look.

Alpha Andromeda has been doing drag in the Bay Area for years, but one particular performance Last summer he caught Phoong's attention. The drag queen wore a trench coat performing Charli XCX's “Vroom Vroom” on stage. Then the lights went off and on again. Alpha Andromeda was now wearing a blue dress posing as Phoong, lip syncing her TV commercial interspersed with Blondie's “Call Me”.

Anh Phoong is wearing a Koredoko top and Oori Ott shorts.

“That billboard you pass every day on your way to work? Now that's drag! Alpha Andromeda tells me.

Being on a billboard wasn't something Phoong was necessarily prepared for. “Fighting with your teeth and being a girl that I don't feel pretty enough and then putting myself on a billboard? It’s a lot,” she says. “It's not like 'Oh my God, I love myself so much.' He was very scared “. She understands that the posters are more than just herself; It's about representation. “Most of my clients are minorities,” she explains. “I think they identify with me and that's what I want.” When Phoong Law tracks her intake calls, her billboards are the number one determining factor, and people don't call just to request legal services.

“I had a little girl in Oakland, she was 12, and her aunt reached out,” Phoong shares. The woman asked if the lawyer had any merchandise to send to her niece for her birthday. Phoong didn't have any products at the time, so he treated the girl to lunch. (Since that meeting, however, the lawyer is now in a shirt.)

As our dinner finishes, our waiter returns with a slice of calamansi cream pie and recognizes who he's been serving all night. “My God, you are Anh Phoong!” he exclaims.

We all laughed at the interaction, a sure sign that Phoong has officially seeped into pop culture: our modern, Gucci-clad Angelyne.

In early May, Phoong finally met Alpha Andromeda. The lawyer found herself back at the club for the reopening of the Stud, a historic queer bar in San Francisco that closed during the pandemic. It was already rumored that Phoong would appear that night. “This is absolutely the COUNTRYEST thing I've ever seen in my life,” someone at the bar commented. Instagram Flyer starring the lawyer. A line began to form and any passerby would have thought Lady Gaga was in the house.

Phoong didn't expect that reaction at all. “Is she even a lawyer? She's just having fun,” he worried her and told me she almost didn't go that night. But just like when he appeared on a loudspeaker or on his first billboard, that night Phoong said to himself, “You know what? Fit. I want to do this.”

Production: Mere studies
Make up: Daphne Chantell Del Rosario
Hair: Adrian Arredondo
Photography assistant: Jeremy Sinclair
Styling assistant: Kelly Sachiko Page

Phillipe Thao is a cultural and entertainment writer. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, InStyle and Catapult.